iPhone 2.1 should fix those pesky bugs

Grab your free iPhone - visit Simply Free iPhone right now!

Latest iPhone News & Reviews:

iPhone 2.1 should fix those pesky bugs

Source: http://www.australianit.news.com.au

EVERYONE loves playing with Apple's 3G iPhone: it's neat, it's cool, it's revolutionary and compelling, if expensive.

It's not just a mobile phone but a dinky little computer that puts web browsing, game playing, GPS navigation and many other matters in the palm of your hand.

But from the day the 3G iPhone hit the global market, including Australia, in July, it's been bedevilled by complaints that some aspects of its performance aren't up to par.

There has been a multitude of horror stories about dropped calls, 3G connection problems, slow internet access and poor battery life.

Most, it seems to DoubleClick, have been coming from the US, where there's only one mobile telecommunications carrier, AT&T, offering the 3G iPhone.

AT&T's network is still being put together, and there are signs that it doesn't have anything like the impressive coverage of Telstra's longer-established Next G.

In Australia, as well as Next G, you can connect an iPhone to Optus or Vodafone's 3G networks. The coverage is impressive and we have heard of few dropouts or connection problems on the scale the Yanks are reporting. In a corner of the Watagan Mountains, on the edge of NSW's Hunter Valley, the other day, DoubleClick was able to ring home on the iPhone while other people with assorted Nokia's and Samsung's were reporting no mobile coverage at all.

But battery life remains a problem: best to recharge our iPhone every night, we find.

If, like us, you sometimes want to watch a movie or play video games on the 3.5in widescreen, it's best to be within reach of a power point. And browsing the internet on a 3G connection can be slow - agonisingly slow.

It's better not to mention cheaper if you can hook up a WiFi wireless broadband link. The iPhone always tries to find one. But it's difficult if you're away from home, work or a neighbourhood McDonalds.

Things hopefully will get better this week with the launch of new software for the iPhone, which was expected to hit the internet over the weekend.

Dubbed iPhone 2.1, it will "fix lots of bugs", according to Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, who mentioned it during his launch of a new range of iPods in San Francisco last week. "It's a big update," Jobs said. "You'll get fewer call drops and you will get significantly improved battery life for most customers. We've fixed a lot of bugs where you have a lot of apps on the phone, you're not gonna get some of the crashes."

Let's hope it's better than its predecessor, iPhone 2.0.2, which launched just a few weeks back and was supposed to do much the same things, but had little noticeable effect.

One thing we do love about the iPhone is the growing armoury of software applications available via Apple's online App Store, especially the games. There are now more than 700 games available from the store: some free, some costing a bit of small change mostly a dollar or two, but sometimes up to $12.99. We can highly recommend the addictive Spore Origins and GTS Racing. Then there's Real Football (that's soccer), Space Truckers, Air Hockey, Pocket Guitar and many more.

To play such games you turn your iPhone sideways to give you a widescreen, and control the play by tilting the phone from side to side. The built-in accelerometer converts your actions into on-screen controls like sending your GTS racer round the track. You can, incidentally, do the same thing with the new iPod Touch and Nano models Steve Jobs launched last week - both have inbuilt accelerometers.

Let us also recommend the free Shazam app: not a game but software that tells you what music you're listening to.

Just hold up your iPhone or free iPods Touch while listening to a radio, record player or jukebox and touch your finger to a button: seconds later the screen displays the song title, artist and album its from and offers to arrange a download, for a fee of course.